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Today we're playing catch-up on a variety items on the locally famous.

First off, we tell of a departure from The Summit: As anticipated, John and Ann Karras of Summit Cove have moved back to Iowa - reluctantly.

Here's retired Des Moines Register editor John's note:

"Well, we've landed back in Des Moines and are staying with daughter Susan until we can get into temporary quarters at Scottish Rite Park, a retirement community where we are buying a two-bedroom apartment (it's being redone from the floor up and should be ready for us by April 1).

"Scottish Rite is actually a lovely place with lots of amenities - walking track, lap pool, hot tub, and so on and on and on. Everyone assures us we'll love it there, and we think we will.

"It was tough leaving Colorado and the mountains, but our shelf-life out there had expired, and it was time to make a change. Our legs told us we couldn't ski and couldn't hike at that elevation any longer, and Ann found it difficult to breathe. So we're here and ready to start a new chapter. We've got our bikes and cross-country skis, and hope to give all of them a good workout in the days ahead."

Hey, Spike! readers may recall a column from a year ago, explaining John's co-founding and peddling most (with still-a-columnist Don Kaul) of the Register's Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa (RAGBRAI) - the world's oldest, largest and longest non-competitive adventure.

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We also heard from ex-Summiteer and former Tecnica boot rep Dave Evers, one of the packed-house crowd at Lord of the Mountains Lutheran Church concert and fundraiser for entertainer Leon Joseph Littlebird, who is again battling leukemia.

In other medical news, photog Bob Bloch is recovering a serious skiing accident at Copper on Dec. 25, ending up in the ICU at St. Anthony's in Lakewood, and finally got home Jan. 12.

"I was healing great until I was hit with a urinary tract infection Jan. 30 and am only now finally seeing some light at the end of the tunnel that's not a train," Bob reports. "I got knocked so low by the infection that I was a zombie for five days and am only now beginning to function."

The Summit County Arts Exhibit Committee Board 2013 Artists Speaker Series' second edition features Suzanne Allen-Guerra, owner of Allen-Guerra Build, who will discuss Mary Jane Coulter's influence in her work on Sunday at 4 p.m., in the Mount Royal Room at the County Commons in Frisco.

Coulter is the architect credited with designing the Fred Harvey restaurants in the national parks in the 1880s.

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And, in closing, we publicly mark the 50th birthday of the effervescent Karen Wray.

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Miles F. Porter IV, nicknamed "Spike," a Coloradan since 1949, is an Army veteran, former Climax miner, graduate of Adams State College, and a local since 1982. An award-winning investigative reporter, he and wife Mary E. Staby owned newspapers here for 20 years.